2010 Republican Wave -- Fruit of the Tea Party Revolt

Can We Maintain the Momentum?

“Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions. The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the tyranny mediated against them.” –George Washington

Having taken a moment to account for the considerable battleground gained in the most significant political offensive between those advocating Liberty versus tyranny in three decades – the fight being led by the
grassroots Tea Party movement against the institutionalized statism headed by Barack Obama and his Socialist Democrat Party – we must now press on, as there is no time for rest.

The ranks of conservatives in our national Congress, and in our state executive and legislative branches across the nation, were greatly strengthened in Tuesday’s midterm election. All 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 37 of the 100 seats were contested, along with 39 state and territorial governorships and 46 state legislatures.

Approximately 82.5 million people voted, and by the end of the count, Republicans won four seats held by retiring Democrats and defeated two incumbent Democrats, for a net gain of six seats – the largest Republican net gain since the 1994 elections. The Democrats retained a majority of the Senate with 51 seats plus 2 independents who caucused with them, compared to the 47 Republican seats.

The House was a sweep. Republicans regained control of the chamber they lost in the 2006 midterm elections, picking up a net total of 63 seats. That eclipsed their 54 gains in 1994, making this gain the party’s best since 1938. This election gave Republicans a 242 seat majority over the Democrat’s 193.

The GOP netted five gubernatorial races, including Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. They also won, for the first time in decades, the governorship of Maine, and retook Iowa, Kansas, and Tennessee. They won the governorship of New Mexico (electing the nation’s first Hispanic woman governor), and held critical governorships in Nevada, Georgia, Texas, and Florida.

Down ballot the news was equally encouraging. While the historic gains in the House were national news, the GOP has gained control of more state legislatures than since 1928. In 26 states, Republicans now hold majorities in both legislative chambers, up from 15 before this midterm. Sixteen states are now completely in GOP hands.

This is the beginning of a movement to restore Liberty. We have a long way to go to undo the damage done by the Left, but this was a very promising rebuke of the Left.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Excessive taxation … will carry reason and reflection to every man’s door, and particularly in the hour of election.”

Indeed, taxation was a factor in the seating of House and Senate conservatives, but as was the case with the original Tea Party in December of 1773, these victories were driven by a renewed concern for not just taxation, but taxation without representation.

The new Tea Party movement is much more than a coalition of fiscally conservative Independents and those still under the banner of the Republican Party. This movement is, at its foundation, a philosophical federation of American Patriots who are, first and foremost, bound together by a devotion to the Essential Liberty defined in our Declaration of Independence and the Rule of Law enshrined in our Constitution.

The renewal of this timeless battle between Liberty and tyranny has reanimated the political contests of our era, yet the conventional spin from pundits and news-cycle talkingheads indicates that they have yet to realize that there is much more than “a political pendulum swing” afoot with the legions of American Patriots who now identify with the organic Tea Party movement.

Of course, Obama and his Leftist cadres can’t comprehend it either. He insists, “The reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument do not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.” He says further that those who do not support statism have an inability to “think clearly,” and that his detractors’ “basic political strategy has been to count on you having amnesia.” And he concludes, “Leadership isn’t just legislation … it’s a matter of persuading people. Making an argument that people can understand.”

May Obama and his ilk continue to cling to those delusions…but the fact is, his endeavor to “fundamentally transform America” has been derailed not because of a “failure to communicate,” but because he succeeded in communicating. However, there is still plenty of damage the lame Demos can do in the next two months.

Likewise, there are some so-called “moderate” House and Senate Republicans who are nearly as delusional – those who think they’ll be able to return to “business as usual” with a restored Republican majority. If they try to do just that, they’ll face the same formidable challenge Democrats now face, because the ranks of conservatives in the House and Senate have been refortified with outspoken constitutional constructionists like Allen West, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and dozens of others. Some of these Patriots unseated Democrats who had held office for decades, and others tossed Republican moderates onto the trash heap of mediocrity.

Establishment Republicans in the GOP are poised to declare “Mission Accomplished” and insist that the “New and Improved GOP” will hold to its stated principles this time around. Patriots won’t adopt a “wait and see” strategy, however. Establishment Republicans had their opportunity when they held both the House and Senate under George W. Bush – and they failed miserably. Instead, we’ll insist that they revitalize the Reagan Model for Restoration now.

The re-energized movement for Liberty demands that our elected representatives, regardless of their political affiliation, act in accordance with their sacred oaths to “Support and Defend” our Constitution, and that they reduce the bloated size, function and cost of the central government to comport with its limited constitutional mandate and limited authority.

In the 2012 election and those which follow, we will root up and toss out Democrats and Republicans who fail to honor their oaths. There can be no doubt, though, that Obama and his party will do everything in their power to prevent the decentralization of the Socialist regime they have created.

Beyond these entrenched threats posed by the adversaries of Liberty, there exist other more subtle dangers to the Tea Party movement.

The most significant hazard is the natural tendency by well-meaning Patriots to contain the movement, to bottle it up, to organize it under one umbrella, which would erode its grassroots strength and render it subject to the same corruption that organized political parties now embody.

To keep the Tea Party movement true to its roots, we must avoid centralization and continue to strengthen every individual link in the chain. The strength of that chain is a unified understanding and articulation of what is at stake: the contest between Rule of Law and rule of men.

To that end, The Patriot Post, since its inception, has been plowing the fields and sowing the seed for this Great Awakening, and we have a vital and essential role to ensure that the movement remains, first and foremost, about the restoration of constitutional integrity, and to support its momentum.

We have much more ground to take if we are to restore the cause of Liberty, and we need your help. For we can only restore constitutional Rule of Law if our growing tide of conservative voices makes it so. We cannot undo generations of civic negligence in one or two election cycles, but we can – no, we must – halt our nation’s downward spiral toward the tyranny of Democratic Socialism.

Among the character traits that distinguish you, as a Patriot Post reader, from too many other Americans is the mission you share with other Patriot readers who are, in the words of Samuel Adams, “keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

I thank you for your vigilance, strength, preparedness and faithfulness.

We rely upon your generosity to help us maintain the clarion call for Liberty for countless thousands of our military, collegiate, political and mission field readers – all of whom are vital links in the chain to hold back tyranny and restore Liberty.

So, it is with due respect to the urgency of our times that I announce our 2010 Annual Fund campaign. We typically raise about 50 percent of our annual operating revenues in the last eight weeks of each year. We do so on faith in the goodwill of Patriots like you.

I humbly request that you support The Patriot Postonline today by making a contribution – however large or small. (If you prefer to support us by mail, please use our printable donor form or print the donor guide below.) We are not sustained by any political, special interest or parent organization. Our mission and operations are funded by – and depend entirely upon – the voluntary financial support of American Patriots like YOU.

As always, I thank you for the honor and privilege of serving you as editor and publisher of The Patriot Post. We are humbled to count you among our ranks. On behalf of our National Advisory Committee and staff, thank you and may God bless you and your family, and may He grant us victory over the formidable challenges to Liberty just ahead!

Your support is more critical than ever before, and as a measure of our thanks, for a donation of $26 we will send you our newest edition Tea Party Primer. Donors of $52 or more will receive four Primers and those giving $100 or more will receive 10 Primers, which you can distribute to family, friends, and associates – spreading the flame of liberty ever wider. (Please allow approximately six weeks for delivery.)

"Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules." —Thomas Jefferson (1801)

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